Posted by
The Old Sailor on Thursday, September 04, 2008 6:48:22 AM
Dear Michael Calderone, (POLITICO)
You write; regarding introductions to Sarah Palin’s Convention speech, “A trio of former presidential contenders slammed the Fourth Estate.” made me stop in my mental tracks. This though demands that the title you use, ‘Fourth Estate’ the Press, is wrapped in a sanctified purity of untouchable honor that is the source of …truth. Well, you are right. However, there is little agreement as to whether that interpretation and the other title, The Media, are the same animal. They are not.
Let us assume “The Fourth Estate” (The Truth) that speaks for the Mob; us infidels without political power, is indeed the purest state. The circus of endowers, the mainstream media that cloak themselves in its sanitized cloth is really the Emperor in his New Cloths. (Naked, as Hans Christian Anderson would describe it) A false state of mind is another way to describe the elite media. There is a competition, akin to hysteria, that drives the visible media players to act as the endowers of truth while only milling about in the theater of the absurd. It is a production they produce for their own entertainment and commercial value. In short, the mainstream media is a parallel anomaly to the assumed tyranny of political power that both compete for; the US Citizens money.
The ‘Media’ today, is a many level entity. It is steeped in adolescent journalism, which should be held to scientific category through persistent comparison and exposure. It must be held at arms length to keep the sane…sane. You might say we need a Fourth Estate to explain to the mob the con-job of news editing, stimulating them to purchase the product between titillating productions.
The Entertainment Industry has consumed the News Industry to obliterate any notion of a purity of Fourth Estate truth. The Fourth Estate has vanished leaving only the Entertainment Industry. Now we are stuck with that as well as the “Mutual Blackmail Society.” You may communicate your questions regarding that title, my coinage, should the Fourth Estate ever return.